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Aliya: a feline perspective

December 21, 2011 by

This is a guest post by my sister’s animal companion, Roxy who made aliya yesterday (as told to her publicist Ben Michelson).
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It took some doing but I finally convinced my person, Vicki, to make Aliya.

Even though the dog next to me, H.G. Clipper, stank a bit, my flight really wasn’t so bad. I don’t think I’ll fly ELAL any more though. They offered me neither a window nor an aisle seat. The entertainment system did not work the entire flight and there was a dearth of reading material. Fortunately Clipper didn’t snore too loudly, and I spent most of the flight cat-napping.

I was pleased that my fans came to greet me at the airport. Fortunately, I had a box to protect me from the mobs.

When I arrived at my new domicile, all I wanted to do was rest. Unfortunately, Vicki had different plans and invited my fans for a party. I let them have their fun downstairs. I am after all a creature of the night. Vicki did come upstairs during the party, eager to play hide-and-seek. I’m not sure why she still enjoys playing this game. In any case, I let her win the first round, but when I saw that she wanted to continue playing, I did not let her win the second round. I was able to avoid detection sufficiently long to send people hunting me not only in the apartment, but up and down the stairwell, and out on the street as well as calling the local veterinary service and alerting them to my disappearance. Only the tempting aroma of an aliya treat sent over by the man at the pet store lured me out of my hiding place behind the bed.

Some of the locals from outside paid me a call yesterday. I am not a racist, but some of these cats are absolutely feral. I greeted them politely nonetheless, though I’m still working on my voiced uvular fricative.

Filed Under: Family life, Israel Tagged With: , ,

Ten reasons why it’s better to make Aliya in 2011 than in 1984

December 19, 2011 by

This is a guest post, written by my son Ben in honor of my sister’s aliya tomorrow!!!!!

Ben arrived in Israel in 1984, a day before his 17th birthday.

 

Telephones

 

  • Cellphone networks did not exists in 1984
  • In 1984, getting a landline phone installed in your house took months, and in some cases took up to 10 years.
  • In 1984, payphones were often out of order. They worked only on telephone tokens.
  • In 1984, if you wanted to make an international call, and didn’t have a phone in your home you had to either call collect or go the telephone room in the central post office. There you paid about $2/minute and the post office took an extra 8% cut. They explained it this way, “Every minute is five seconds less.” This meant that you paid for a minute, but only got 55 seconds.

 

Inflation

 

Aug 1984 – 14%

Sep 1984 – 18%

Oct 1984 – 19%

Nov 1984 – 16%

Dec 1984 – 4%

 

 

2011 – 2.5%

 

Email

 

In 1984, Email was available only to university staff and people who took university courses requiring use of a computer. Businesses used Telex’s. (Faxes were not in widespread use until the 90s.)

 

Public busses

 

In 1984, only express bus lines were air-conditioned.

 

Television

 

In 1984, there was one Israeli channel. In many parts of Jerusalem, you could watch Jordan TV. At high altitudes you could also receive Middle-east TV from Lebanon. Cable and satellite television service was not available. Importing a satellite dish large enough to receive American television was illegal.

 

Israeli Currency

 

Towards the end of 1984, the largest denomination bill was worth only $3.50. My friend’s father bought a Volvo in 1984 with a duffle-bag full of bills.

 

Foreign Currency

 

In 1984, it was illegal to change Shekels outside of banks. It was illegal for Israelis to own foreign currency except for traveling outside the country. (Yitzchak Rabin was ousted from his position as Prime Minister for breaking this law.) Everyone I knew bought shekels only on the black market.

 

Hi-Tech business sector

 

Did not exist in 1984

 

Modiin

 

Did not exist in 1984.

 

Travel Tax

 

In 1984, Israeli citizens had to pay $100 tax in order to leave the country

 

Food

 

In 1984, ketchup was watery with red food coloring

In 1984, the only mustard available was actually mustard flavored mayonnaise

In 1984, the only chocolate available was Elite (whose factory was inRamat Gan)

In 1984, low fat cottage cheese was unavailable

In 1984, fresh baguettes were unavailable

In 1984, supermarkets did not bake bread and pastries

In 1984, bagels were unavailable

 

 

Ben             .

19 Dec 2011

Filed Under: Family life, Israel Tagged With: ,

Are you in your pajamas?

December 14, 2011 by

Last week I gave a lecture. I had lectured at this place before. Usually there is a room full of maybe 20-30 people. They are bright-eyed, attentive, and a great audience. I hadn’t lectured there in a couple of years. In preparation, the secretary sent me an email and asked if I had any handouts to give to the students. Then she asked, “Do you plan to come in to lecture?” Come in??? I had no idea what she was talking about.

Well, what she was talking about was the fact that they now provide distance learning. Only a few people, if any, were going to be listening in the room. Everyone else was going to be watching and listening in the US, in Canada, in Belgium, in England and who knows where- over their computers.

When I arrived in the venue, I was handed an earphone/microphone and had a camera set up with a monitor and with two computers, one in front of me and one beside me with readouts as to who was listening on two different connections.

Last week, the lecture required a lot of interaction and clarification and by the end of the evening, I was really enjoying talking over the air with these disembodied voices and answering their questions.It was like having my own call-in talk show.

This week, however, it was a bit disconcerting. I was speaking about using humor and metaphor in therapy. Of course it meant that I was telling some jokes. Somehow, telling a joke that people usually enjoy and hearing no one laugh was really strange.

And then I realized the absurdity of the set up. Here I was talking to people who were sitting in front of their computers. They could be doing pretty much anything and I would never know. So as the session drew to an end, I decided to ask. I asked “What are you all doing when I’m talking? I’m just curious. Like are you sitting there eating salami sandwiches? Are you wearing your pajamas?”

All of a sudden I had one of those movie montages in front of my eyes, my voice ringing though empty rooms at scattered locations throughout the world as people sit in bed in their pajamas eating salami sandwiches.

Filed Under: Ramblings Tagged With:

Mixed up

December 7, 2011 by

Today I had a most pleasant experience. I taught my first class in a program to train marriage counselors. I left Modi’in for Jerusalem early in the morning, missing breakfast, to avoid rush hour traffic. I had not yet met any of the students and was pleased to find a room full of interesting, bright, and versatile women. What a pleasure it was to meet them! I look forward to spending time with them in the weeks and months ahead.

After three hours of teaching, I headed back home to Modi’in and on the way, passed a sign that looked like this:

I must have been hungry, because a quick glance had me thinking that instead of Magen David, it said “Haagen Daz.”

But I’m not the only one who’s mixed up. The International Red Cross has made Magen David Adom drop its six pointed star and instead adopt a red “crystal” as its symbol when appearing outside of the country’s green line so as to not offend the Palestinians. You figure out the logic to that!

Filed Under: Israel, Ramblings Tagged With: ,

Parting

December 2, 2011 by

June 1967

I am 7.5 months pregnant with my first child. My husband of just a year is serving as a chaplain in the US Army. We are planning to leave the Army after our baby is born and to go to a civilian congregation. He has been hired as the new rabbi at the House of Peace synagogue in Columbia, South Carolina. We have just visited there a second time to talk with them about where we will be living and what changes we would like to see in the house the congregation owns. We are in the Atlanta airport. He is flying in uniform back to Fort Knox. I am flying to Philadelphia where I must take final exams at Gratz College so that they can see that I really did study on my own that year so that I can receive my BHL (Bachelor of Hebrew Literature) degree.

I am young, 21 years old, and very pregnant.

We wait for my plane. When we are called to board, we embrace. I cry. I will miss him.

I take my seat on the plane. The man next to me starts to speak. “He’ll be all right. Lots of men return healthy and whole from Vietnam. He’ll get to see that baby of yours.”

December 2011

I am a bit older. That baby is now a man with 6 children of his own. Soon I will be saying goodbye to my husband once again. This time he really is going to Vietnam.

But I am not worried.

He is going to supervise the kosher cooking for a tour. We have been to Vietnam together several times. We lead tours there. It is a lovely place to visit. It is beautiful and has rich traditions and friendly, welcoming people. The war years are barely a memory by now except for in places they have designated as war museums or in Cu Chi where the Vietcong built an elaborate tunnel system. A tour there is a treat and I look forward to returning.

This morning I bought him some instant coffee to take along because Vietnamese coffee is “different.”

We’ll keep in touch over his iPad and my computer.

But there still may be tears when he leaves.

Filed Under: Family life, Getting older, Relationships, Travel Tagged With: , , ,

Thanksgiving 2011

November 25, 2011 by

I will spare you the usual blah-blah of how wonderful my family is and how amazingly great it is when we adults all get together and tell you instead about the good things that have happened recently and wonderful things to look forward to that make me really thankful.

We recently returned from a trip to the US. In a few weeks time my sister, the last member of my immediate family not yet living in Israel, will be coming to Israel to live. All of us are very very excited. I will finally have my sister nearby after 45 years of living varying long distances from each other (all my fault… she stayed in the same place while I roamed planet Earth.) I wanted to go and be with her to visit some of the places we shared, to reminisce, and for me to say goodbye to Philadelphia, the city where I was born, where I grew up, and where I got my education. It is unlikely I will visit there again.

When we drove up to the house we used to live in, we were surprised to find the woman who had bought it from my mother out on the lawn. She was friendly and chatty and we enjoyed speaking with her. My sister pointed out that the “new” owners had lived in the house about as long as we had.

We enjoyed walking in the downtown area. I loved seeing my cousins and hearing about their lives.

I even enjoyed the antics of a future Israeli immigrant

There’s more to tell about the trip, but that’s a small taste of some things that made me happy with the promise of more to come!

Filed Under: Family life, Israel, Ramblings Tagged With: , , ,

On artists, mathematics, and presidential candidates

October 29, 2011 by

I need someone to clean my house. I need someone really good. I will have to interview candidates. I will ask them to identify the paintings of 10 famous artists and see who does the best. After that, I want to hire a gardener. I want someone who really knows how to nurture plants and keep them healthy. I will have to interview candidates. I will ask them to find the solution to 10 quadratic equations and see who does the best.

Absurd? Not really. Not if you think about how the US chooses its president.

US citizens want someone who will govern well, see to it that people can live in dignity by assuring there are adequate educational, vocational training, professional training, and employment opportunities. US citizens want a president who can conduct a foreign policy predicated on American values such as freedom and justice and who can keep Americans safe from foreign and domestic threats.

So how is the president chosen? By his ability to speak well. We watch the candidates debate. We listen to their speeches. We listen to them answering questions.

But are we really measuring fitness for the job? If I knew that a candidate had a healthy set of core values, could assemble teams of experts to advise him, and had the knowledge and intelligence to know how to process that information and plan a long term strategy on the basis of what he had learned, I really wouldn’t care whether he spoke well or, for that matter, if he could identify the paintings of 10 famous artists or find the solution to 10 quadratic equations.

Filed Under: Ramblings Tagged With:

What can we say?

October 16, 2011 by

From the moment that Gilad Shalit was kidnapped I have felt enormous compassion for him and for his family. Able to put myself in another’s place in my imagination, his parents’ place was one I chose not to visit because the pain would be so overwhelming. He is an innocent young man unlucky enough to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. His parents have been living a nightmare. Who among us does not want to see him home safe and sound?

But the price…

Those of us who have been living in Israel remember those horrific days of the second intifada when on at least a weekly, sometimes daily basis, innocent people going about their business were murdered on the streets, in buses and restaurants and hotels and catering halls. I was afraid to turn on the radio, fearing another attack. I would come out of my class that I taught on Sunday mornings, and several weeks in a row, the car radio would tell me how many innocents had been murdered that morning. Literally every person in Israel knew at least one terror victim- many of us know several families who lost family members.

And now, Israel has acceded to the Hamas requests to release murderers who were responsible for these http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/148780#.TpqdBZsUqdA. And they are unrepentant. They are not ashamed to say they would do it again. They will be received as heroes. They will inspire and school others.

So we will have convicted terrorists back out where they can act and have emboldened their protege’s who won’t mind spending a few years in an Israeli prison if it means they are able to kill Jews. After all, all that has to happen is that terrorists kidnap one soldier and they’ll be out again eventually.

What would we say to the Shalit family if we chose not to make this deal? A difficult question.

But here’s a more difficult one: what will we say to all of the families who G-d forbid, will lose their loved ones as a result of this decision?

G-d help us!

Filed Under: Israel Tagged With: ,

Survey

September 19, 2011 by

Are you one of those people who gets many calls each week asking you to participate in a survey? Does the person on the other side of the phone speak too quickly and have a really bad speech impediment? Here is a sample of what I imagine might happen if I gave them the chance…

I am doing a survey on banking. Do you mind if I ask a few questions?
What bank do you use?
Does your whole salary go into that bank? (I hear salivating)
Do you have horaot kevah (automatic payment of bills)? (More salivating)
Do you have any investments with that bank? (Heavy breathing)
What would a fair estimate of how much you make each month be? (More heavy breathing)
What percentage of your income goes into your savings? (Did I hear her say, “Jackpot!”?)
When you chose a password for your account, how did you come up with something you could remember but others couldn’t guess? (I think I heard her drop the phone and run out the door.)

Filed Under: Ramblings

Fairy godmothers

September 14, 2011 by

OK, I’m not really talking about fairy godmothers, but I thought it might be a topic that people were curious about.

Well, actually, yes, I am talking about fairy godmothers, but not in the fictional sense.

There is a concept without a name (at least one that I am familiar with) that I would like to explore. If it’s been written about before, I would love to hear about it, so please let me know.

Having grown up in a home that wasn’t the most nurturing, I had to find validation other places. Here’s where I found it: there were teachers who smiled at me, there were my aunts who made me feel loved, and there were my grandmothers. All of these people were, to some extent, fairy godmothers. They were around sometimes and it was often merely their presence in my mind that formed for me a safety net in the world. As long as they were around, even if only in recent memory, I felt loved and supported. As a group, it felt as if I was encircled by them and protected.

As the years went by and I learned how to appreciate my own value and accomplishments, I didn’t need fairy godmothers so much. But still there were my parents there in the background, out of sight, but still potential supports. After the death of my father, I substituted my uncles in his role of standing behind me, supporting me.

Somewhere in my 30s or 40s, I began to realize that I took the place of fairy godmother for some Lamaze students I taught and some clients I worked with as a therapist. They carried me in their pocket or their mind or their heart, to take out when they needed reinforcement and stability and, I guess, love. I only knew, because they told me.

As time goes on, I realize the world is full of fairy godmothers. They are the people who are in our lives who just by their being there, even when they are far away, give us affirmation and strength. As we get older, often they are mentors, peers, and nowadays, facebook friends– people whose presence enriches our lives.

Often, our fairy godmothers don’t know the function they have in our lives. Often, we don’t realize it until they are no longer around.

So today, look around at your fairy godmothers. Figure out who they are. And appreciate how they have made your life better, just by being there.

And then, think about whose fairy godmother you are, because whether you know it or not, someone who is not in your family– who you may see only occasionally, someone’s life is better just because you are in it.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Ramblings, Relationships Tagged With: , , , ,
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